


Diner Talks

by Living_Underground



Series: After Eleven [1]
Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M, I have no idea what genre this would fall into, Post-Episode: s11e10 My Struggle IV, Pregnant Dana Scully
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-16
Updated: 2020-04-16
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:02:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23675068
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Living_Underground/pseuds/Living_Underground
Summary: Scully and Mulder spend the year or so after series eleven getting to know a kid working in a diner they visit regularly.
Relationships: Dana Scully & William | Jackson Van De Kamp, Fox Mulder & William | Jackson Van De Kamp, Fox Mulder/Dana Scully
Series: After Eleven [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1704715
Comments: 3
Kudos: 45





	Diner Talks

**Author's Note:**

> I started this ages ago when I was high on pain meds after a car crash. I was supposed to be working, but, you know, pain meds. And it has kind of just...grown. And shrunk. And grown again. 
> 
> Anyway, I am tired of typing bits up and deleting them and rewriting them (THIS is why I could never write seriously because rewrites and editing drive me insane) only to like the original bit more than the rewritten bit. 
> 
> William/Jackson might come across as OOC, but I hate his asshole-ish-ness in the show, so my William/Jackson is a nice kid who has some troubles, but he tries. 
> 
> Um...it's not great...I just...you know...

‘Jeremiah was a bullfrog, was a good friend of mine, never understood a single word he said, but I helped him drink his wine…’ It was murmured under his breath tunelessly as he scratched away with charcoal in his sketchbook.

‘That’s an old song, Sweetheart,’ his mother frowned over at him from the stove, ‘where did you pick it up from?’

‘It was on the radio this morning,’ he raised a shoulder in a half shrug, not taking his eyes off his art. ‘I remembered it from when you used to sing it to me.’ The heavy silence that settled over them made him look up at her. ‘Mom?’

‘That wasn’t me, Sweetheart. I never sang it to you.’ She gave him a sad smile, walking over and ruffling his hair, letting her fingers brush down his cheek.

‘Oh,’ he looked down, shifting uncomfortably in his seat and folding in on himself. ‘Sorry, Mom, I just assumed. I…’

‘It’s fine, Sweetheart. No worries,’ she pressed a kiss to the crown of his head before strolling over to the fridge and taking out a couple of peppers, slicing them into strips. ‘You’ve been dreaming of her again, haven’t you?’ The lady with the red hair had been a recurring character in his dreams since his childhood and often featured in his sketchbook. The explanation that his parents had adopted him when he was still just a baby had followed a year of him plaguing them with questions about the woman in his dreams, the woman with the sad eyes.

‘I don’t mean to, you know. I love you and Dad more than anything, more than anyone who didn’t want me because I was different.’

‘We’ve talked about this, Jackson. From everything we know, she sent you to us because of herself, not because of you. You are our miracle, and I am grateful for her for bringing you into our lives.’

* * *

‘Geriatric, Mulder! I am not geriatric!’

‘Of course you’re not.’

‘I mean, you’re older than me, and I’m not shipping you off to a care home just yet. Geriatric!’ The woman scoffed as her partner guided her to the bar of the diner, nodding along in agreement with everything she said, barely getting time to respond to her tirade.

‘Nobody is shipping you off to a care home either, it just means that they are monitoring you and baby slightly more carefully. Which, considering all of the complications last time, is not a bad thing.’ He raised a hand to flag over the kid behind the counter, the same kid they ordered from every few days, as they had the same conversation they’d been having for the last two weeks.

He was tall and lanky: gangly. An unkempt thatch of strawberry-blond hair tickled his ears and caught in the long eyelashes framing his pale eyes, the only striking feature of a face that was otherwise forgettable, whilst still being friendly enough to encourage conversation. That was why he chose it.

It wasn’t _entirely_ coincidental that after the first scan they’d been to they wandered across the road to the diner where he had just got a job. He had a certain way of influencing things. The fact that they kept coming back was probably down to the chef and the proximity to the hospital she worked at more than anything, though he did like to think they felt some connection to him, some inexplicable gravitation, pulling them there to talk and smile with him on a regular basis. And. Well, maybe he was exerting some pull on her, sending a feeling of contentedness her way.

‘I’ll have the salad, please,’ she smiles at him, ever friendly and polite to the son she doesn’t know is right in front of her.

‘ _And_ she’ll have fries, a grilled cheese and a chocolate shake, with a slice of cherry pie to finish it off,’ he orders, knowing that if he doesn’t she will just eat his food and complain she is still hungry.

‘No, I won’t. I feel fat.’

‘You will, and you are not. Same for me, but a coffee instead of the shake please.’

He knows this order by heart now, had sent it through when he saw them walking across the street. ‘If it makes any difference, I think you look beautiful.’

‘See Scully, told you,’ the man grins as she rolls her eyes. ‘I always said there would be someone out there who finds you beautiful. Must be why you always get the bigger slice of pie.’

‘Dammit, you got me!’ He jested, throwing his hands in the air and laughing as he turned to serve one of the other customers. He returned a few moments later, balancing plates hot from the kitchen hatch behind him, and slide them down onto the counter. The coffee and milkshake followed.

‘You guys are getting faster. That barely took two minutes.’

‘ _You_ guys have ordered the same thing eight times now and I have a photographic memory,’ he shrugged with a half-smile.

‘Maybe we should start mixing it up a bit, giving you more of a challenge,’ Scully smiled, tucking a stray strand of hair behind her ear.

‘But I reckon you’d still go back to this in the end. I think you always would. From my experience people spend their whole lives going back to where they started, whether they want to or not,’ he stared at the couple for a moment from under his shaggy fringe as they both seemed to contemplate him like a particularly tricky puzzle, and then he laughed, ‘but what do I know, right? I’m just a kid.’

‘Nobody’s _just_ anything,’ Mulder said softly.

* * *

The bell over the door chimed as Mulder’s voice filled the more or less empty diner with his easy tones ‘…think we should consider the idea of you taking as long as you want off, not rushing to get back, so that you have time to fully recover, and so that we can spend more time together as a family.’

‘We’ll still be spending time together as a family, Mulder, and we already agreed that since you work from home, and, really, have very little of that at the moment, that you are more than happy for me to go back to my career whilst you are more of a stay-at-home-dad.’

‘And I am perfectly happy with that. You know I am. That’s not what I’m saying, though. What I’m saying is that the hospital are more than happy for you to take a longer period of time off and we are financially stable enough for you to do so, so why not take the next few years off, just taking every day as it comes. They say that the first few years go by so fast and that we’ll miss them when they are gone, so why waste them?’

‘Mulder,’ she looked at him incredulously as they sat down, ‘are you hearing yourself right now? We are having a child. Which, yes, is wonderful and exciting, but we also need to think realistically. Children cost a lot of money, Mulder. There’s clothes and shoes and food and books and toys and bicycles and red wagons and school and field trips and college and healthcare and we will probably have to help them financially with a house or an apartment, and all of these things that we have to consider, and by the time that they are twenty, we’ll probably need financial support from them because we will be so old that we will have retired and will have more medical bills than we can afford and we will probably be starting to think about assisted living facilities and it just goes on and on,' she gasped for breath. 'And the economy at the moment, Mulder, I mean, I can’t foresee it getting any better in the next twenty years, can you? Financially stable now does not mean financially stable when we are deciding which school to send our child to.’ She sighed. ‘Mulder, are you listening to me?’

He's taken out his phone from his pocket and pulled up a page of notes. ‘Here, read this.’

She scrolled through it, analysing the data on the screen before looking up at him. ‘What is this?’

‘I got one of the old guys from the financial crimes unit to help me with it. It’s a breakdown of the financial viability of you taking the next six years off from work, culminating in a year spent travelling the world with our little bean before they start school. At which point, you return to work, if you want, or I get a job lecturing in psychology, or I go and plague Quantico with my presence as an instructor. Whatever, we go back to work whilst our bean is in school. And we just keep working until we don’t want to anymore. We retire. We live in our house. We help our baby build their own house and their own life. We love our grandchildren. They stay over at weekends and we teach them the constellations and we drive them around the land that, hey, maybe we’ve turned into a sustainable sustenance farm. Have a couple of pigs, maybe a goat. It’s possible. And if things get tight for a bit, they get tight for a bit. We always muddle through, Scully.’

There was a tense silence as she mulled this over, broken only by the sliding of plates on the counter towards them. ‘I didn’t want to interrupt. Sorry.’

‘You’ve thought this all through, haven’t you?’

‘Yes. We have enough savings between us. I mean, it’s not like we live particularly lavishly, and I’ve never really needed much. Hell, I spent ten years in my apartment before bothering to get a bed, and, even then, I don’t know where it came from. We spent a significant amount of time living completely off the grid, with barely anything supporting us when we were on the run. We had no access to any of the money we had in our accounts at that time, which your Mom kept secure, and I think she invested some of it, none of which we have really touched these past few years. With my occasional writing and consulting jobs, we can save up for the travelling, and I’m sure if you still wanted to keep working from home whilst looking after the baby the hospital could get you consulting work or theoretical research that you can do online and at home, treat it kind of like a sabbatical.’

She stared at him, at the hope and excitement swimming in his eyes. He had their entire future planned. Part of her loved him for it, for how proud he was of himself, for how much work he had put into it. ‘No.’

‘Wha- Scully, why?’

‘Because, Mulder! Because you have just planned the next forty years of my life!’ She stabbed a cherry tomato with her fork.

‘But-‘ he looked dumbfounded, ‘you like plans…?’ there was a lost puppy look to him now, with furrowed brow and big eyes.

She turned to their usual waiter and sighed. ‘What do you think?’

‘To the plan?’ She nodded. ‘I mean, I’d take it in a heartbeat. The chance to spend the first few years of your kid’s life solely with them? And to travel the world. If I had all the finances sorted, I would take it,’ he shrugged, ‘but I get why you don’t want to.’

‘You do?’ They both stared at him, this young man with the wisdom of someone much older, Scully in admiration and Mulder in confusion.

‘Why?’

The kid snorted. ‘Dude, you just planned her entire life out without even asking her about it, of course, she’s going to say no. It sucks when people make decisions for you without giving you a chance to have your say.’

‘See, he gets it,’ Scully smiled in appreciation of the kid in front of her before returning her gaze to Mulder, her smile softening into something sadder. ‘I’m tired of a life of people taking decisions out of my hands. I feel like, for the last 25 years, very few of the very major things that have happened in my life happened because I chose them. I would like some autonomy in my future, Mulder. In _our_ future.’

‘I…’ he dropped his head to the counter and banged it three times. ‘Shit, Scully. I thought I was doing something you would like. I didn’t think… Oh, God…’

‘Hey, hey,’ she ran a hand through his floppy hair, scrunching her nails against his scalp. ‘It’s not your fault.’

‘But it is, though, isn’t it? I mean, if you had never met me, never been assigned to work with me, I wouldn’t have dragged you all over in search of aliens and UFOs and monsters and demons. You wouldn’t have been abducted. You wouldn’t have had cancer. You wouldn’t have nearly died so, so many times, you wouldn’t have lost your sister or Emily, you wouldn’t have lost Queequeg, you wouldn’t have had to wait so long to have a baby – you wouldn’t have had to raise William on your own for the first year of his life, or give him up for adoption! You wouldn’t have had to wait so long to have this baby, either, and-‘

‘And I wouldn’t have met you. I wouldn’t have so many happy memories of crappy motels. I wouldn’t have had Queequeg in the first place. I wouldn’t have had someone to rescue me every time I got into trouble. I wouldn’t have had someone to fight for me when I couldn’t fight for myself. I wouldn’t have fallen in love. I wouldn’t have had our son, I wouldn’t have got to spend one glorious year with him. I wouldn’t have a home to come home to at night. I wouldn’t have this baby, our little bean, right now. If I had never met you, Mulder, I would be lost. I would probably grow old and wither to be a spinster, living in some old apartment, knitting jumpers for my dog and reading romance novels to fill the empty void in my lonely heart.’ The two men who had been listening to her impassioned speech raised their eyebrows. ‘Okay, so maybe that last bit was an exaggeration, but, Mulder, If I had not met you, we wouldn’t be here now. You would have rambled on about space and aliens until somebody shot you to shut you up, either out of boredom or because you hit upon the truth, and I would have worked as a bored FBI medical examiner for the rest of my life, never getting to see any of the truly amazing things you have shown me, like invisible men, and premonitions, and psychics and the inside of many, many crappy motel rooms.’ She took a slurp of her chocolate milkshake and shrugged, saying in the same tone one would use to order more salad, ‘I’m more grateful for you than I am for anything else in the universe.’

‘Invisible men? What is it you two _actually_ do?’

Mulder glanced at the kid with a smile. ‘We’ll tell you about it some time.’

* * *

‘Hey, how’s the baby?’

‘Baby’s squirming like a sack full of puppies.’

Mulder was grinning and practically bouncing off the walls, ‘it’s so amazing. Feeling those little kicks and wiggles.’

‘Mmm…less exciting when it is happening inside of you, and you need to pee all the time. And when you can’t sleep because there is a human rolling around inside of you.’

‘Which is why you have me, so I can read stories and help baby sleep.’

‘And I’m so lucky to have you. But right now I need to go pee again,’ she smiled at him, kissing his cheek as she brushed past him.

‘She’s happy really.’

‘I believe you.’

‘It’s just…she’s had a rough time with the whole thing. This time, and the…well, it’s not been an easy road. And it’s not the easiest of pregnancies. She wants to be going at a much faster pace than she can and she knows she can’t, she just doesn’t want to accept it.’

‘Dude, you don’t have to explain it. I get it, Man. I mean, as much as I can get it.’

Mulder smiled, a slight frown creasing his brow as he studied the boy. ‘You’re a good kid, y’know, but you’re very odd. And as someone who has been called many things in his life, that’s not meant as an insult. Just an observation. You seem different from everyone around you.’

‘I was going to say, you don’t seem like the most usual guy in the world.’

Scully walked up then, ‘that’s probably because he’s not.’

‘Good thing or bad?’ Mulder asked as she sat down next to him, tucking a strand of her red hair behind her ear.

A soft smile curled her lips and warmed her eyes, ‘definitely good.’

'…All the boys and girls, joy to the fishes in the deep blue sea, joy to you and me…’ He continued to hum the rest of the song, completely tunelessly, as he wiped down the counter next to them.

‘I haven’t heard that song in years,’ Mulder said, looking over at the kid, then back at Scully. ‘Hey, remember that night in the forest?’

‘Remember it? How could I forget it? We nearly froze to death that night with no way of communicating with civilisation.’

‘Much more memorable than any sort of “teamwork and communication conference” at any rate,’ he snorted.

The smile that had lingered on her face as they reminisced fell. ‘I used to sing it to William, to get him to sleep, or to calm him down when he was fussy.’ The humming had stopped as the kid listened to them. ‘Keep singing.’ Scully said, a sad echo in her voice.

‘Oh, Ma’am, I’m sorry, I can’t really sing,’ he shrugged apologetically.

‘Please never call me “ma’am”. Ever again.’

‘Sorry.’

‘Y’know, she can’t sing either, but she still does it,’ Mulder pointed to his partner with a quirk of the lips and she retaliated by elbowing him in the ribs and rolling her eyes, making their waiter grin.

‘My mother used to sing it to me when I was a baby. I don’t really remember it, just the first verse and the chorus.’

‘Maybe you should ask her to teach you the rest, I’m sure she’d like that.’

He looked down and frowned, ‘oh, I can’t, she…I…she’s…gone.’

‘Kid, I’m sorry, I…’

He brushed Mulder off with a detached wave of his hand, ‘hey, it’s fine, Man, you weren’t to know. Wasn’t your fault, don’t apologise.’

A heavy silence fell between the trio as the lazy Friday afternoon activity swirled on around them.

‘Jeremiah was a bullfrog, was a good friend of mine…’ Her voice started softly, just a quiet whisper, but the boy behind the counter heard clearly enough.

‘I never understood a single word he said, but I helped him drink his wine, and he always had some might fine wine,’ they were singing together, harmonising in their completely out of key, out of tune way, instinctively following one another.

* * *

Their food was on the counter waiting for them when they walked through the door. Well, one of them walked. Scully more waddled. She closed her eyes as Mulder helped her into a booth, rather than sitting themselves at the counter.

‘Hey, she okay?’

‘Yeah,’ Mulder looked up at the kid, who had walked over with their food balanced precariously. ‘Her back’s playing up,’ he looked over at her with a smug I-told-you-so expression hiding the worry that was evident in his eyes, ‘which it wouldn’t be if you had listened to me and stopped painting when I told you to. Barstools lack the support she needs at the moment.’

‘Mulder, I’m fine. I am more than capable of sitting at the counter.’

‘No, Scully, we are sitting here today, then we are going home and I am running you a bath, and you are spending the rest of the week in bed, or on the couch. Relaxing. No more nesting, no more working, no more cooking.’

‘That sounds like an offer you would be stupid to refuse,’ the kid said.

Scully merely glared at him before returning her glare to Mulder, under which he shifted uncomfortably. ‘I’m gonna go to the little boy’s room.’

They both watched him leave before the kid slid into the booth opposite her. Her glowering eyes rested on his a beat before she rolled them. ‘Shouldn’t you be working?’

‘Taking care of customers is in my job description. I’m just going above and beyond. Now, what’s the problem? You don’t seem yourself.’

She huffed a sigh and leaned back into the leather bench seat. ‘I’m fine.’ He mirrored the quirk of her eyebrows in challenge. ‘I’m tired of being treated like I’m made of glass. I’m tired of _needing_ to be treated like I’m made of glass. And I’m _so_ tired of being kicked in the ribs!’ Her voice was sharp and loud on the last three words, and the ambient sounds of the diner seemed to still for a moment as she shrank back further into her seat before crumbling and bursting into tears.

He focused on her. Without any actual word to describe what he was doing, the best he could put it would be creating a bubble around them. From inside the bubble, all she could perceive was the diner going on as usual, and all people external to the bubble could perceive were a woman and a teenager having a conversation. It was like he was projecting a barrier that said ‘don’t pay attention to me’ around them. A barrier that went two ways. ‘Hey, now. It’s okay.’

A napkin was pressed into her hand, and she used it to mop her eyes and nose. ‘No, it’s not. I’m sorry, you don’t want to hear about this, it’s just I’m so tired and everything hurts and I just I want to be able to hold her and I’m so worried something will go wrong because something _always_ seems to go wrong, and I need to pee all the time and I can’t see my feet and I get dizzy when I stand up and I worry that Mulder’s not talking to me about his nightmares anymore in case it upsets me or makes me panic, but then that makes me worry even more because who else does he have to talk to about it and I just…I’m sorry, y-you don’t need to hear all this, I’m just being-‘

‘Hormonal. You’re tired and in pain and worried about your baby. Everything you said gives you every right to cry. You’ve been through a lot. You’re going through a lot. It’s okay, okay?’

She sniffed and rubbed her nose with the disintegrating tissue, ‘you get a lot of pregnant women in here crying?’

He chuckled, looking down at the Formica top table as he ran his thumbnail around the groove of the edging. ‘No, but I have been to a lot of therapy and an eidetic memory. I’ve picked up some stuff.’

‘That what you want to do when you grow up? Become a therapist?’

He looked up at her then and frowned. ‘I…I don’t know, really. I mean, it might be cool. I…I never really gave the future much thought. My life’s…it’s been kind of complicated…I guess I never really planned. Maybe, though. It would be nice to think I can help people. I think I want to travel first, though. See the world through different eyes. See the world through my own eyes, even,’ he smiled at her. ‘I’m not really the type for settling.’

‘I can appreciate that.’

They paused for a moment, happy in comfortable silence. ‘Feeling better now?’

‘Hmm, emotionally? Yes. Physically? No.’ She sighed as she rubbed a hand across the top of her distended abdomen. ‘I mean, I love her, don’t get me wrong, but I’d be so grateful if she’d stop beating me up.’

He had caught the first mention but wasn’t sure if it was just a slip of the tongue. ‘She? You found out?’

‘Yeah,’ a small grin split across her face. ‘I had a feeling, y’know, she’s carrying different to last time, when I had our son…’

‘William?’ At her raised eyebrows he shrugged, ‘eidetic memory - you’ve mentioned him before.’

‘Yeah, William. She’s sitting differently, she’s more active, more restless. I just had a feeling. I figured we should find out, for sure, while we still have a little time to redecorate from the pink.’

‘You went with pink in the end? Somehow, I can’t imagine you choosing pink,’ he laughed.

She rolled her eyes and lifted her hands in defence. ‘I didn’t. Mulder chose. _I_ wanted to go with neutral colours.’

‘And I want to spoil our little princess with everything she wants. And right now I think she wants pink walls.’ Mulder said as he stood by the end of the table.

‘Right _now_ she wants cherry pie.’

Their waiter stood up, giving Mulder the chance to slide into his seat. ‘Hey, um, the restroom door was stuck, I couldn’t get out. You might want to have someone check it out.’

‘No problem, I’ll go tell someone and bring you back some cherry pie right now.’ He returned barely a minute later with two slices of pie. ‘So, you think of names yet?’

The couple exchanged a challenging look as she tucked into her pie, leaving her mains for later, whilst he started on his grilled cheese and fries. ‘We both have a name. We’re just deciding which comes first.’

‘Well?’

‘I want her to be called Melissa, in honour of Scully’s sister.’

‘And _I_ want her to be called Samantha, in honour of _Mulder’s_ sister.’

He seemed to be pondering this for a moment. ‘Hmmm, seems like you have quite a conundrum. Melissa Samantha or Samantha Melissa? Well, if you don’t mind my asking, who was William named after?’

‘I named him after Mulder’s father.’

‘Although,’ Mulder pointed out, ‘you also have a father called William. And a brother called William.’

‘Yes, but I would hardly have named our child after Bill, would I?’ Mulder nodded in acceptance of this.

The kid considered for a moment. ‘Is she going to be a Scully, a Mulder, or a Scully-Mulder? Or a Mulder-Scully?’

‘You’re weirdly into this whole learning-about-random-strangers’-baby thing, you know that?’ Mulder commented.

The kid shrugged. ‘I guess I just like you guys, and I envy your family. So?’

‘Uh, we haven’t decided yet, have we?’ Scully looked at Mulder, reaching over and twining her fingers with his on the table between them as he shook his head. ‘I think it depends on which order of names we go with, doesn’t it? I mean, it depends on whether we want her initials to be SMS, SMM, MSM, MSS, SMSM, SMMS, MSSM or MSMS. I mean, any combination is going to be…interesting.’

‘And would you ever shorten her name? Mel? Sam?’

‘I guess it just depends upon whether she looks like a Lissie or a Sammy,’ Mulder grinned, excitement laced in his voice as he imagined his little daughter running around.

‘Well, if it makes any difference, I like Melissa Samantha. I think it flows well.’

‘Well, we’ll take that into consideration. Thank you.’

‘No problem,’ he shrugged, giving a short salute before backing away and serving the family three tables along. 'Just, uh, holler if you want any more pie.'

* * *

‘Hey, where’s the kid that’s normally here?’ Mulder asked the waitress who had taken his place.

She shook her head, going back to what she had been doing, ‘dunno, he just said it was time he moved on.’ She looked back at them, frowned and reached for something under the counter. ‘This you two?’

The printed photo she placed in front of them was black and white, grainy, and definitely them sat at the very counter they were sat at. Scully looked up to the security camera pointed down at them. ‘Who wants to know?’

‘The kid said you would be here. He wanted to give you something,’ she shrugged half-heartedly, reaching under the counter again and bringing out a tissue packed pink gift bag. A card poked out the top.

They looked at one another, Scully raising an eyebrow, conversing with their eyes. ‘Open it, I guess,’ Mulder nodded at it.

‘Should we, maybe, x-ray it? Or…I don’t know, open it away from crowds? Just in case?’

There was a moment of hesitation before Mulder shrugged. ‘He didn’t seem like the sort of kid to kill us with a gift. I mean, he seemed more likely to shoot us or stab us if he wanted to kill us. Up close and personal. Just open it.’

She plucked the envelope out cautiously. When nothing exploded, her courage increased and she flipped it over, looking at the boyish scrawl of their names. ‘Did we ever tell him our names?’ Her finger traced the F of Fox

‘I…’ Mulder hesitated. ‘I don’t think so. But then, it’s probably not _that_ hard to find our names, if you know where to look.’

‘Still, it’s weird a random kid taking the time to find them.’ She slipped a digit under the flap of the envelope and tore it, tugging out the card. It had a sketch of them walking, hand in hand, her free hand on her bump, his free hand carrying her bag. They were laughing at something, and the wind had caught her hair, whipping it behind them. She had a sketchbook full of charcoal drawings just like this at home, tucked away in a box with a broken snow-globe. ‘Mulder…?’

‘I know…what does it say?’

She took a breath and flipped the card open, inhaling sharply before starting to read ‘”Dana and Fox. I thought I would know what to say. I knew when I started, but now I am actually writing I cannot think of the right words. I am so proud of you – both of you. I wish I had got the time to know you both properly. I understand. On some level, I think I have always understood. Our lives separately were dangerous, together they would have been fatal-“‘ her voice cracked and she sniffed, backhanding a tear that had broken free and rolled down her cheek. ‘”I think they still are. I wish I could show you my face. I think you wish you could see my face, too. Maybe, one day, it will happen.” William, Mulder. William was right in front of us.’

‘Do you want me to take over?’

She shook her head and cleared her throat. ‘”Your daughter is so lucky. You are great parents – you did what was best for me, and showed me so much love despite your pain. I am so glad I got this short chance to get to know you, even if not as much as any of us would have liked. I know you know this, but please do not come looking for me. You have suffered enough already. This isn’t meant to hurt you, only tell you that I am safe and well and keeping out of trouble. And to tell you not to have any doubts about your suitability as parents. You are already amazing at it, both of you. Know that I love you, and will keep you safe, William. P.S. I always wanted a little sister.”’ She sniffed again, burying her face in Mulder’s shoulder. Sketched stars surround the writing, and Mulder brushed his thumb over them as he rubbed Scully’s back and pressed his lips to the crown of her head.

Once her sobs had eased, she sat back up, stretching and wincing as her back twisted. Her partner handed her a napkin and she dried her cheeks before reaching for the bag. In amongst the baby pink tissue paper were nestled three packages in the same soft pink. She took the first out and unwrapped it carefully, preserving the paper. Inside was a set of three sleepsuits, each with a different design of stars. The next package contained a little grey alien stuffed toy and a green frog stuffed toy, making both of them chuckle. The last of the gifts was a hooded bath towel with an embroidered UFO motif on the hood.

‘I can’t believe he was so close to us and we never even knew it. Again.’

Mulder was fingering the UFO on the towel. ‘He gave us a chance, Scully.’ She looked up at him with eyes clouded in confusion. ‘He gave us a chance to let him get to know us, get to know where he came from, and for us to spend some time with him. He got to know about you and everything you went through.’

‘Hm,’ she murmured with a nod.

‘It kind of explains a lot, really. I mean, how many other kids do you know who care so much about one couple’s lives. He wanted to know all about baby names and always seemed ready to give advice when it seemed like we needed it. And he listened to all of our stories about the X-files.’

‘That’s true. And, I mean, that takes dedication.’

* * *

She was folding the new baby grows, tucking them away in the dresser in the new nursery. It had been at her insistence, surprisingly, rather than his, that the room had a space theme. He had painted three of the walls dusty pink, and the last light grey on which she had painted little white stars. In the top left corner, she had also painted a small, discrete UFO. Glow in the dark stars were attached to the ceiling, in accurate constellations. A mobile of the solar system hung above the crib. A plush moon and two stars were attached to the wall.

‘Scully, I’ve been thinking.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me sooner, I could have stopped you.’

‘Oh, haha-de-haha,’ he glared at her, the inescapable smirk plucking at the corner of his mouth, no matter how hard he tried to stifle it. He walked up to her, pressing a kiss behind her ear and dropping his chin to her shoulder as his arms snaked around her waist to rest either side of her stomach. ‘He knew you were his mother. He _knew_ , Scully. He recognised you. Last year. But he didn’t recognise me. He had to know I wasn’t his father.’

‘I think you’re right Mulder.’

‘You do?’ The circles he had been rubbing on her stomach halted and he tilted his head to look at the side of her face.

‘Yes, I do,’ she looked back at him. 'Maybe, at least. I don't think we'll ever really know.'

‘Then why would he say he loved both of us? That he was proud of us? And that we are amazing parents?’ Doubt had crept into his voice, concern and panic.

Scully twisted around in his arms to face him and sighed, ‘because of this, Mulder,’ she reached up and tugged his head down to brush her lips against his gently. ‘We spent years and years believing he was ours, together. You loved him like a father, Mulder. You loved him in the same way I loved him, the same way the Van De Kamps loved him. Maybe we didn’t get to show him as much, but I think he knew. We stood over his body in the morgue discussing our love of him, how we had searched for so many years for him. I think he knew that you loved him more like a biological son than CGB ever did. Here,’ she moved his hand slightly on her stomach, ‘that’s your daughter, telling you I’m right.’

‘Do you think we could teach her Morse code? So she can talk to us?’

‘You want to think that through, Mulder? Think through teaching a foetus, who is still in my womb, and who will not be able to communicate in full words and phrases, let alone sentences, for another year, at least, to communicate via kicks in a complex code?’

‘Uh…’

‘Yeah,’ she smirked, ‘we’ll wait until she’s six, maybe seven for Morse code.’

‘Y’know I am going to spoil her, completely and utterly, don’t you?’ He dropped a kiss to the top of her stomach. ‘She’s going to have everything her little heart desires. And I am going to be there every step of the way, by your side, together. We’re going to be amazing.’

‘We already are, Mulder. We already are.’

* * *

‘…And that’s the tree where I’m going to build you the best tree-house ever, with a tyre swing and everything. And up here on the porch, well here’s where your Mama’s going to sing you to sleep as the sun sets…’ Scully followed behind Mulder, pausing halfway up the steps to the porch to take a breath and ease away some of the pain she felt, as he carried their daughter into the house, talking to her constantly in a low murmur to keep her settled. ‘And this is your home, Lissie. This is a safe place, where we are going to keep you warm and safe and happy. And you’re going to grow up here to be so bright and clever and funny and beautiful, just like your Mama.’

He turned back when he didn’t hear the door close behind her, to see Scully still stood on the steps. He frowned. ‘You in pain?’

‘Just tired. And slightly tender…’ she sighed with a tight smile, leaning against the railing.

‘Hold on, I’ll come help, I just need to…’ he looked around himself, turning on the spot in the centre of the room. The bassinet was still in the nursery upstairs because they had left for the hospital in a hurry, and he had left the car seat in the car because he still hadn’t figured out how to unclip it without jostling it so much that it upset the baby in it.

‘Mulder…’

‘No, it’s fine, hold on…’ carefully shifting his tiny daughter to one arm, cradling her head in the crook of his elbow, he pulled the throw pillows that Scully insisted on having off one end of the couch, gently laying her down with a soft brush of his lips to her forehead. He hesitated, bit his lips for a moment, and then grabbed the throw pillows he had dropped to the ground and surrounded her with them so she couldn’t roll anywhere and fall off.

‘Mulder…’

‘Stay there, I’m coming,’ he said, checking that their daughter was safe before bounding across the living room over to the porch. ‘D’you want me to carry you?’

‘No, Mulder. No!’ She cried, laughing as he reached behind her to pick her up. ‘Just, give me a hand.’

‘Here,’ he wrapped an arm around her back, slinging her arm over his shoulder. ‘Lean on me, that’s what I’m here for.’

‘Thank you,’ she paused as they reached the doorway and looked up into his eyes. ‘Thank you.’

‘It’s just a few steps, Scully. No need to thank me.’

‘No, I wasn’t…’ she frowned, finding the words she wanted. ‘I meant, thank you for my life. _Our_ life.’

A smile spread across his face, slow and happy, as he leant down slightly and pressed a small, chaste kiss to the corner of her lips. It was a declaration of love, in their own way. If the past 25 years had taught him anything, it was that love, between them at least, was better implied than stated explicitly. It held more meaning for them that way. It was the way they had been doing it for so long – little gestures, shared looks, words with multiple meanings. Their own special modus operandi of love. To change that now seemed nonsensical. And so, with a smile, as he led her across the threshold and into their home, pulling the screen door to so that the warm breeze could still caress them, he picked up their daughter, Melissa Samantha Mulder-Scully, held her between the pair of them, and promised her that she had nothing to thank him for, she had saved him as much as he had saved her.

**Author's Note:**

> So, um, yeah... 
> 
> Well...
> 
> Okay, let's just address the fact that Mulder is William's father and I refuse to believe anything different. But. I wanted to include the bit with him worrying, and Scully calming him down because I think that it is something that he would have doubts about, whatever they believed and whatever they knew to be true. 
> 
> There will be others in this universe, I'm not done playing with my toys!


End file.
